The Ruined Death Knight

"It has been done." Danzel mumbled as he put his shield in his storage ring.

Turning his head, the last 5 Great Mages were standing in front of him as one of his Draugr´s.

The 5 of them did manage to kill quite a lot of his undead, but in the end, they too fell in defeat.

While the 12 undead of Velkir sends continuously their [Death Spear]´s, once Danzel finished raising the dead and joined the fray with his Draugr´s, the Great Mages were simply overwhelmed.

They simply couldn´t do anything.

With the Draugr serving as Danzel's meat shield, Danzel managed to close the distance without much difficulty. Making him a threat that needed to be exterminated for them to survive, as his strength was capable to damage their barriers more than they were comfortable with.

Alas, if they didn´t take care of the Draugr, they would have been shallowed since the barriers would even get destroyed with so many undead attacks.

And to deal with those 2 threats, they were only 2 magic casters that had the freedom to use offensive magic, since the other 3 were focused on not getting everyone impaled by the [Death Spear]´s.

In fact, the biggest threat wasn´t Danzel nor his numerous undead, but the undead that Velkir had created that kept forcing the three of those magic casters to cast their protection magic.

Not only that but with the distances that Danzel ordered them to stay, every single one of them could react in time and dodge the various spells that the Great Mages shot at them.

The Great Mages that thought that they had the advantage by further away from them learned soon enough that it was the exact opposite in fact.

Once the first of them was slain by Danzel, they were forced to run away, but with them surrounded they soon found their way towards undeath with Danzel's assistance.

Looking at 40 or so undead watching him and awaiting his orders, Danzel sends a command to his own undead.

`Half of you go and scout the nearby area in case they are reinforcement from those guys, while the other half go and gather all the weapons that are laying around. Make sure to order them based on their quality.´

As soon as the Draugr´s heard Danzel's voice inside their head, all of them bowed slightly their head and went to do their given task after saying "We follow our Lieges will".

Seeing them go, Danzel shook his head.

`Although I doubt that reinforcement will be coming, it never hurts being extra careful.´

Nonetheless, Danzel wanted to give all those Draugr´s a task to do to keep them standing like some statues.

By now, Danzel understood that the undead he created weren´t plain out mindless and did in fact hold a shred of self-awareness.

Skull Claw was the best example of that,

"Wait, does that make me a father in some sort of way?" Danzel though perplexed.

*Tick

Taking notice of the sound beside him, Danzel stared at the 12 undead that Velkir had given him for this mission.

"Hmm, I originally wanted to keep more of you guys intact...I wonder if Master Velkir gets angry for losing so many." Danzel mumbled to himself, and the undead in response looked at each other without a shred of emotion.

Leaving regrets and weird thoughts behind, Danzel looked around the battlefield that they were responsible for and saw multiple wagons.

Using his [Eyes of the Damned] he could see that inside there were the supposed prisoners. Of course, Danzel didn´t need to use his skill as he was previously informed by Velkir of such information.

The fact that he himself destroyed one of such wagons and killed some of the prisoners was also a reason why he knew.

"You guys wait here while I check on the prisoners. If something happens while I am gone, come notify me." Danzel said coldly as he went towards one of the wagons.

In total, they were 10 wagons but through the crossfire from the fight, only 8 remained.

Getting on one of the wagons from behind, Danzel pushed the cloth away, allowing himself to see what it was inside.

Inside a cage, men and women wearing rags while their hands were chained together with the metal bar of the cage were to be seen. Their feet had also chains but weren´t connected to the cage itself.

They were multiple bruises to see and small cuts to see on those prisoners, but for better or worse, the woman had a more noticeable amount of such wounds.

Danzel could sort of guess what happend to that woman, but decided to push such thoughts away.

"Let´s see..."

Gripping the bar of the cage with all his strength, Danzel started to slowly bend the bar of metal.

"Huh..?"

"Who is he...?"

Seeing such a feat, the prisoners were amazed, but after thinking of their position, their expressions soon turned grim.

After bending another metal bar enough for him to fit inside, Danzel stood awkwardly in the middle of them all.

The ones who were near him growled as far as possible with their chains.

Their fear was reasonable with what they experienced as prisoners. The fact that Danzel's armor and the sword were stained with blood didn´t help much with easing their worries.

If the dark knight in front of them decided to raise his long sword and take their lives, no one could stop him.

Such thought was reasonable as Danzel himself was questioning himself if he should kill them all or spare them.

`Velkir mentioned that I can kill them if the option of saving them isn´t there. But now that I killed the soldiers of arcana kingdom I would be expected to let them live...´

Just the thought of doing that made Danzel frown, at least as far as the skull could frown.

Counting the people in the wagon, they were 18 in total. Considering that they were 8 wagons in total, that would mean that they are 144 prisoners who were supposed soldiers.

Killing them wouldn´t just bring him closer to his goal of becoming a [Death Knight], but the number of hours that he would save would be tremendous since each of them should be a couple of thousands of XP.

If it weren´t for the fact of having that sliver of doubt that Velkir was testing him for some sort of reason, he would already have acted and killed all the prisoners by now.

`Maybe that isn´t the case at all and I am just paranoid. Letting them live will leave a good impression on the client, but according to Velkir, what we are doing right now is charity work for them. Killing the enemy would be good enough, but if I were to bring them back, they might think of Velkir being a pushover that his group is willing to do free work.´

Danzel learned quite early the meaning of what mercenaries are.

Hired killers.

Those who do the dirty work for some coin.

At least that´s what two mercenaries with quite enough bloodlines had explained to him.

Saving the prisoners whether morality good it was or not. It had the potential to harm his group.

At least that´s what he told himself.

"I will need a second opinion..." Danzel mumbled as he went outside the wagon while ignoring the confused and scared gazes of the people.

Looking at his Draugr´s having finished picking up all the weapons, Danzel sends out his command to his and Velkir´s undead.

"Gather all prisoners from the wagons and bring them outside. You 12 make sure to break the chains connected to the cage, if they resist you may use force, but don´t kill them."

With all the undead going to work, Danzel brought out a device that Velkir had given him a few days ago.

It was a communication device.

"Hmm, the design is different to the one I used with Hanson, but if I remember right I need to inject my mana and then find-"

After trying sometimes, the communication devices lighten up shortly after a cold voice comes out of it.

"For you to call me, it seems like you finished your mission, am I right?"

"Yes, Master Velkir. I killed all the enemies and secured the prisoners."

"If that´s the case, what´s the call for?"

"You see, I wanted to ask something about the prisoners-"

Danzel started asking about his previous worries and the current situation while emphasizing the cons rather than the pros of keeping them alive.

Danzel might be a heartless mass murderer, but he hadn´t lost all reason to start a future problem just because of his current grid. In the past, a careless mistake of his leads him into a whole chain of misfortunate events that lead him to almost dying for real.

Once he was done with his explanation, Velkir stayed silent for a moment before answering.

"Your reasoning does indeed hold bits of truth in it and it might be an opportunity for us. Our client should have already realized what we are up to. Knowing them, they most likely would try to ignore our work and say that it was our own decision just that they don´t pay us."

"But with the prisoners in play, we can either ask them to acknowledge our work and pay our worth in full or abandon their soldiers and suck their pride just that they don´t pay."

`Velkir is indeed shameless for the first thing that he comes up with is how to rob his allies.´ Danzel thought internally.

Though it might seem like he disrespects the powerful Lich, in truth, Danzel secretly admired Lich's intelligence.

"It will take me at most 15 minutes to see if such trade is possible, till then...can you hold on?" Velkir said with a cold voice.

"There is no need to worry, I already send my undead to patrol for potential reinforcement from the enemies side. So if there is a case of such thing happening, I would be able to execute the prisoners." Danzel said with an ice-cold stone.

The prisoners who were for a long while gathered behind him flinched by mentioning their execution as if it was no big deal.

"Well though, Danzel. Wait till I finish the things on my side. If I haven´t called in the next 15 minutes, you know what to do."

"Yes, Master."

Shutting down the communication device, Danzel stared at the hundred or so prisoners that had an anxious expressions.

Though the people couldn´t see Danzel's face, all of them couldn´t help but think that he was grinning maliciously behind his helmet.

...

After 15 minutes of passing, the promised call of Velkir did indeed come.

The eyes of the prisoners flashed with hope.

Danzel who picked up the communication device and heard Velkirs order nodded his head and put the device back in his storage ring.

Turning towards the prisoners, Danzel had only one thing to say.

"Sadly, your very own kingdom has abandoned you."

As soon as his words were processed by the prisoners, cries of disbelief and despair were soon covered by the cries of pain resulting from Danzel's sword.

In no longer than a minute, another hundred more notifications appeared in front of Danzel.